Roughly 37% of Earth's land is today employed for agricultural purposes, with about 11% used for growing crops and the remainder for pasture. With more than seven billion mouths to feed greater demands are being put on agriculture than ever before, at the same time as land is being degraded by factors such as soil erosion, mineral exhaustion and drought.

Satellites are being applied to agriculture in several ways, initially as a means of estimating crop yields. Optical and radar sensors can provide an accurate picture of the acreage being cultivated, while also differentiating between crop types and determining their health and maturity. This information helps to inform the market, and provide early warning of crop failure or famine.

By extension, satellites are also used as a management tool through the practice of precision agriculture, where satellite images are used to characterise a farmer's fields in detail, often used in combination with geographical information systems (GIS), to allow more intensive and efficient cultivation practices. For instance, different crops might be recommended for different fields while the farmer's use of fertiliser is optimised in a more economic and environmentally-friendly fashion.

And agricultural monitoring is increasingly being applied to forestry, both for forest management and as a way of characterising forests as carbon sinks to help minimise climate change – notably as part of the UN's REDD programme.

The forecast of crop yield is used operationally to cover
continental areas such as Europe for the purposes of agricultural
policy decisions. The techniques are also being implemented
world-wide in more critical areas to support aid programmes.

Forestry applications cover both the mapping of forest area and health of the canopy itself. Today the extent and health of the world's forests are key indicators in the monitoring of the world's climate.